Oh, and I completely forgot to mention that we have test server running this event setup so you can practice there.
Since I added forum mentioning notifications let's put them to some use.
Saber lol solo Martin Gelidis despr Shader vGelder Nice_guy HSquishy rath tommyk HonzaSabCZE Kalic sergunff Meld TWAIN
What do you guys think about this event, will you be able to participate?
P.S Feel free to mention more people in case I forgot someone since that's our only method of sending notifications currently ^^
Sure, we'll post it everywhere, but we need to decide on exact time first. I kinda hoped some other players would reply by this time but I guess nobody reads forum, so we'll have to decide ourselves. Also wanted to setup a practicing server before making posts.
We haven't decided on exact time yet, so let us know when you can play if you're interested in participating. Right now I'm thinking of doing it at 14:00 CEST but may shift it to evening time.
Hi all,
Time flies and it's almost two years since we started our servers. And I think it's a good cause to celebrate that we're still alive and kicking :) Nothing too fancy this time, just a regular temperate city-builder without NewGRFs. Though I thought let's give another try to income-based cargo requirements (like in Christmas event). Meaning that you'll be required to make certain monthly income from cargo delivered to your town instead of its amount like in regular CB.
You can practice for this event on our test server called "CityMania.org TEST - 2nd Anniversary Event (June 4) Practice".
Date: Sunday, June 4th at 16:00 CEST
Game Mode: 50K temperate 3h (12 years), new CB server mod with income-based cargo requirements (like in Christmas event).
OpenTTD version: 1.7.0
Goal of the game: Be first to reach population of 50,000 people in claimed town (or max population after 12 years if 50k isn't reached)
Server: CityMania #9 (will become online at least 30 minutes before the event)
Participants:
- [comment to join]
You're not required to register for this event in any way. But if you are interested and can be around, let us know by commenting in this thread, we'll reserve a spot for you.
You can team up for this event but top players are advised to play solo ;)
UPD: Game link (you can find savegame there).
You make it sound like those scores are somehow not fair or not achievable anymore. Which, I can assure you, isn't true since I personally verified it. Gelidis is a highly skilled player and he managed to play that game almost flawlessly. And there were no significant changes in game mechanics since that time so anyone can get close to that score or even beat it if he puts enough effort into it.
Sadly we weren't keeping savegames back then but Gelidis recorded his gameplay once: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/10613074 Unfortunately there was a bug in the game at the time when this particular video was recorded. Nothing too major (you probably won't even notice it) but I still had to reset that score. But other games weren't affected by the bug, so scores are perfectly valid. And overall tactics he used in that video is still good, if you can repeat it you'll get about 40k for sure.
But regardless of that I still like the idea of having a separate scoring tables for different time periods, so I may add it sooner or later. But in no way it will mean throwing away and forgetting old scores and achievements.
Hello,
I change the rules a little bit, mostly adding a part about unfair advantage. That's not really a new rule since it wasn't ever allowed to use multiple companies for your advantage, even on Novapolis. So I was quite surprised when I noticed that it's not mentioned in our rules anywhere. Guess it was considered to be obvious or something, I don't know. Well, now it's officially there. Though, as I said it doesn't change much, it's still considered to be a pretty minor rulebreak so you may get away with only your score and exp being reset for that game. But if you keep breaking it repeatedly you may get yourself banned.
If anyone wonder what's the reason for having such rule it's because you can really go a long way with it. Even though I try to setup servers in a way to minimize an advandage of prepared setups or other kinds of help it's still somewhat effective. And some elaborate setups can take a very long time to prepare. What's even worse is that such tactics have the most effect for short game modes. And it's kind of stupid to have 20 min highscores that are only beatable with 10 hour preparations. Small goal are supposed to be reached fast, that's the reason for this rule. If you want to play for a long time go for a bigger goal.
I added it to rule 2, so it only applies on goal servers (but still allowed on quest ones) and also changed it a bit to be more precise. So here is how all the changes look like (new things in bold):
Goal servers: Competition allowed! No self competition on primary industries! No using other companies to advance yourself.
You can compete on primary industries on goal servers. City builder servers have a slight limitation, that you have to transport the resource to your town, otherwise it is considered as game breaking! but only to achieve the game goal
You can have maximally one station per each industry. Self competition is rule break! Having more than one loading station per primary industry (aka self competition) counts as blocking.
No competition on secondary industries even if you are the second to deliver resources there. No rating pushing. No using other companies for helping your main one or preparing a good start.
- but only to achieve the game goal. Still not exactly happy with this wording, but at least it is more general than just cb thing. So you can compete for, say, moneyline, but it has to be logically related to completion of game goal by your company. If you just compete for the sake of screwing up your opponent that's a sabotage.
- Having more than one loading station per primary industry (aka self competition) counts as blocking. It was missing an important bit about being applied only to primary industries. Other than that it's just a better wording imo.
- No using other companies for helping your main one or preparing a good start. Covered this arleady. You can reset your company and start a new one but it shouldn't be getting any more advantage than a first one. Also it's ok to help a new player a bit, but if company is aiming for a good highscores it's not allowed to receive any help.
Also I know there are some scores in top25 of new cb servers that were made with some preparations and so in violation of this rule. And I'll especially emphasize that it's not allowed to use towns grown by other companies or industries funded by them. I may not act on that immediately but rather implement some more town protection first (industry removal should already be there). But after that I'll definitely check all the scores in top25 and reset ones that I find unfair. Also feel free to post here or otherwise let me know if you see some scores that weren't achieved in a fair way.
That reqiurement is actually from vanilla OpenTTD, not even our citybuilder mod. For town to grow it requires at least one active station in town vicinity (if you want you can see exact zone with our modded client).
As ST2 said players usually do it by starting some pax service in town (you need at least 5 stations for max growth speed anyway).
Also all that only applies to classic CB servers, new CB ones (#3 and #4 currently) work differently. You'll still need to tranport passengers and mail in town, for faster growth. But there are no tricky requirements on station amount/placement so if you're new to citybuilder I'd recommend you to play there.
For coal to be counted it has to be
- Accepted by industry. Just piling it up on station won't work, so deliver it to power plant (and if you don't have one in your town you'll have to fund it)
- Coal unloading station has to be relatively close to your town center. For classic CB servers it's 25 tiles manhattan distance from station sign to center. On new CB servers any part of station counts, not just sign, and power plants there are placed is such way that pretty much any station will be fine.
Oh well, looks like no one was strong enough to last till the end of the event ;) Or, rather, I did but I was out of competition anyway since I prepared it. So, I guess, we call it a draw.
So, what do you think, why so little interest? Was it too crazy landscape, too hard requrements, bad event date or all together?
And yeah, landscape, what do you think of it? Of toyland industries, meow-nuts trains, alpine climate? And that money-cb variation?
I'm thinking of setting up server like this but for some easier goal, like current multigoal cb. Mb won't keep it always on but only near special holydays.
Here is a link to the game, it has savegame: 80539
And I posted on tt-forums. Picture is nice idea, I'll try to prepare some.
UPD. Added two pictures (smaller one is in the news).
Ho! Ho! Ho! Its Christmas time again! And this year I got into NewGRF making so It's going to be a very unique game mode. You can get a sneak-peek of our preparations for it on our test server (CityMania #0), but some important things will be kept secret till the very event.
Date : Wednesday, December 28th at 20:00 CET
Climate: Christmas special
Game mode: Unique variation of City-Builder. Based on our new CB mode, but money will be more important.
Goal: Be first to reach 100k inhabitants in claimed town (or max population after 20 years if 100k isn't reached)
Train set: Only MEOW engines from NUTS on PURR rails. Accelerated progress: new engine almost every year.
Server: CityMania #9 (will become online at least 30 minutes before the event)
Participants:
You're not required to register for this event in any way. But if you are interested and can be around, let us know by commenting in this thread, we'll reserve a spot for you.
You can team up for this event but top players are advised to play solo ;)
New feature testing on server 0. Clearing all kinds of land (but not water) now costs the same as plain grass tile. Since I can't disable fields without newgrfs I thought I'd do it this way. Keep in mind though that actual cost doesn't go down, just server is paying compensation immediately after each building action, but you still need full amount to do it.
Also while I was at it I also did full compensation for all bridges, tunnels and foundations (but just the structure, you still pay for the rail/road). That is to make it more fair for people that started later and have to bridge over others tracks.
While I originally thought of doing compensations for just, say, first two years of company I decided to keep it always on to make things simpler (as it doesn't matter for big company anyway).
Right now it's only working test server but I intend to eventually enable it everywhere unless we find some issues with it. Have my doubts about quest servers though.
Hi!
Recently I've been working on a tool to calculate optimal route distance for max profit. Although I'm not finished with it I think it's good enough to show you: https://citymania.org/tools/profit. Not perfectly accurate yet (still have to reproduce some openttd bugs;) but it is pretty close so overall picture should be reasonable.
So let me know what you think of it, mb you'll have some ideas how to improve it. I was thinking of adding some train constructor instead of pre-defined trains and calculation for 4-station 2-way route (currently used 2-station one that isn't rly possible for, say, coal).
Well, it's a nice suggestion, but I doubt it will do much for server popularity since new players usually don't use commands. Also, it's not that easy to do because quest server is mostly controlled by old Luukland/Novapolis code which I don't want to meddle with just yet.
I also have some ideas of how to improve quest server, it's just not high on my priority list. Though, I'll probably change quest lvl for some quests in the immediate future to ease the problem of player being stuck on them.
Congratulations on completing all quests! You are actually the first one to complete them on CityMania, me and cordal did it back when it was called Novapolis.
As for your questions, it's a bit hard to understand your english, but I think I got most of it.
I think of adding option to redo quests but it probably won't happen anytime soon as there aren't currently many players who would've used it. So for now you can create second account if you want, it's perfectly fine.
And you're right, we aren't getting many players on our servers, I'm trying to do something about it but so far nothing really worked. Oldschool players rarely play nowadays and new ones don't seem to grasp what's going on here and just prefer servers that already have a lot of companies.
By delay you mean have game paused for some time before it actually starts? OpenTTD doesn't currently support it. I can set it in a way that it will unpause with first company created, but some players seem to not understand that and just leave. Besides, quest timer starts when you create a company, not when game starts so you can spend some time planning the game while it runs. Unless you need whole 6h for quest ofc. Anyway, I'll think what to do about this.
Having two loading stations for same resource from one industry. It's prohibited because it blocks others from competing on that industry. But it only applies to primary industries.
Btw, we have rules page in the wiki that is a bit outdated but at least explains this kind of things.
Yeah, it's a bug, I noticed it too but didn't have time to fix it yet. Fortunately it's nothing major, just showing 2 hours more that it really is. Will take me some time to deal with it though because I have some other stuff I need to finish first. But after that I'll fix all quest times (and top positions) so there is no need to worry, you can continue doing quests.
Ok, on to the next trick. Mb some of you saw me building rails blocking worse town zones to increase chance for bigger house. Very tedious but it seems to slightly increase population. Though the way emulator does it isn't exactly the same, it only compares zones accessible from particular tile and doesn't look ahead.
I added option to immediately destroy small houses and surprisingly it doesn't benefit growth at all. So, either I made a mistake somewhere or even for a fountain or a statue that has 0 pop, potential of it being replaced is worth more than that of getting bigger house in its place. And that's with constant GR1 so replacement/construction ratio is the lowest.